Hacker News Reader

Comment by demircancelebi | Hacker News Reader

I think money might be a good motivator in such circumstances. Maybe Github should think about integrating "paid requests". I think we would definitely have more open source software at better quality.

View on HN

I don't think it would. I have had people offer to pay for features etc. They always offer tiny amounts as if I'm going to jump up in gratitude and get to work in it straight away. TBH I see it as an insult.

What if I offered you $5,000 to fix it?

I'll escrow that for a mere 10%.

Most people (even many programmers) have no idea how much software costs. This minor feature you want? It'll take a couple of hours to design, a few more hours to implement, you need to test it, write docs for it, and all of a sudden the better part of a week is gone.

Even at a very cheap rate that quickly adds up to way more than most people are willing to give...

Depending on their attitude, I don't think you should necessarily treat a lowball offer as an insult. The problem isn't that the user is offering (say) $10 for the work, but that not enough users offer $10 for the work.

There is already something similar, although a 3rd party service https://www.bountysource.com/

Most people would be unwilling to pay the cost of developer time.

Even a relatively minor issue that could be fixed in a few hours would cost hundreds of dollars.

On the other hand, involving money may make people feel even more entitled to having their issues fixed.

That's actually a good idea for a first-class feature. That way, the GitHub email can mention a financial offer in the subject line to stand out from the noise of free requests.

That's a fantastic idea!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com